Weekend Reads (May 11): “Ghost in the Shell,” Godzilla, “Animaniacs,” Steve Albini, Apple
Recommended weekend reading for May 11, 2024.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
After its release in 1995, Ghost in the Shell soon became one of the most successful influential anime titles of all time. But much of its success came from non-Japanese audiences due to the marketing and business acumen of London-based Manga Entertainment.
To begin, Manga got the film a very limited theatrical run in early 1996. Partly thanks to a standout performance in New York, it earned $500,000 ($1 million today). That helped to spread the word and set the video version up for success a few months later.
You have to combine that, though, with Manga’s years of legwork to build a network of retailers. It sold anime at comic book shops and music outlets, running tie-ins and promo events along the way. One Manga executive said, “We come from the record business and are using music tactics to sell video. We’re promotion maniacs.”
Some called it a “grassroots” approach. Manga didn’t have the supermarkets on its side — it had to get creative.
When I was first getting into anime in the mid-to-late ’90s, Manga Entertainment was arguably the biggest, flashiest anime distributor around. They had all of the coolest titles, including Ghost in the Shell, Gunbuster, Macross Plus, Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion, and Ninja Scroll. Indeed, if I saw their distinctive logo on a release, my curiosity was instantly piqued. (Of course, they released some crap, as well, like Black Magic M-66 and X.)
By the early ’00s, however, Manga Entertainment began experiencing a long, slow decline as a result of increasing competition and various mergers and buy outs. A relaunch of the Manga brand was announced back in 2017, but has yet to actually materialize.
Godzilla turns 70 this year. To mark the occasion, Cole Burgett is writing a four-part series that examines the famous movie monster’s cultural impact. In this first installment, he writes about the original Godzilla movie and the rest of the films in the franchise’s “Showa” era.
The Showa Era, from its more serious early entries to its wackier later outings, set the stage for the wide-ranging universe of kaiju that would come to dominate the Japanese cinemascape, and cemented Godzilla’s place as a cultural icon capable of moving beyond the confines typical of monster movies. As Godzilla retaliates against monsters and men alike, these movies invite audiences to reflect on their own societal and environmental responsibilities, providing a narrative commentary on humanity’s perpetual struggle with its innate destructive tendencies and the higher call of guardianship and protection.
Related: My review of 2023’s Godzilla Minus One. “It takes almost everything that’s beloved and celebrated about the Big G’s various incarnations, distills it down to its purest essence, and delivers a story that’s filled with as much heart and human drama as it is with kaijū spectacle.”
Quinn Myers offers a behind-the-scenes look at another influential animated title from the ’90s: Animaniacs.
Animaniacs was an instant hit. Not only did it win several Emmys and a Peabody, but it was lauded as a show for both adults and kids, which gave rise to it being credited as the first TV show to garner an interactive online audience.
“We packed the show full of cultural references and information that the kids would never get, but they loved it anyway, because it was packed with comedy, too. Here were these adorable cute characters, saying all these sly jokes. It was smart and funny, and it didn’t talk down to anyone.”
Via The Retro. Of course, I can’t post something about Animaniacs without including this iconic and delightful musical number.
Bernard Hill, best known for his role as King Théoden in the Lord of the Rings movies, died this week at the age of 79. He was also known for his work in Titanic and Gandhi.
The charge of the Rohirrim in Return of the King is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time. I get choked up every time I see it, and much of that’s due to Hill’s impassioned performance as Théoden.
Legendary producer Steve Albini died this week from a heart attack. He was 61 years old. Albini, who worked on albums by Pixies, The Breeders, Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Low, Mogwai, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, to name just a few — seriously, check out his discography — was (in)famous for his no frills approach to recording music as well as his bluntness and controversial statements.
Consider the pitch he sent to Nirvana in 1992 to work on In Utero:
I think the very best thing you could do at this point is exactly what you are talking about doing: bang a record out in a couple of days, with high quality but minimal “production” and no interference from the front office bulletheads. If that is indeed what you want to do, I would love to be involved.
If, instead, you might find yourselves in the position of being temporarily indulged by the record company, only to have them yank the chain at some point (hassling you to rework songs/sequences/production, calling-in hired guns to “sweeten” your record, turning the whole thing over to some remix jockey, whatever...) then you’re in for a bummer and I want no part of it.
Or this blistering essay from 1993 that laid out everything that he saw wrong with the music industry. Here’s how it starts:
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end, holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed.
Back in August, Jeremy Gordon published a lengthy piece on Albini that’s well worth the read:
Albini — and I can’t say this without it sounding a little silly because of the way the music industry has conspired for decades to sand off the edges of any once-transgressive cultural movement, but more on that later — is a genuine punk rocker. Not because he plays music with distorted guitars or exudes contempt for pretentious establishment figures — though he has done plenty of that — but because throughout his career he, perhaps more than anyone else, has attempted to embody the righteous ideological tenets that once made punk rock feel like a true alternative to the tired mainstream.”
Numerous artists and individuals, including Cloud Nothings, Pixies, Fred Armisen, Ejiah Wood, and Primavera Sound have all paid their tributes to Albini’s work, influence, and friendship.
Apple has created some of the most iconic, well-known, and even beloved ad campaigns of all time. (Remember their “Get a Mac” ads from the late ’00s starring Justin Long and John Hodgman? And their “1984” commercial is widely considered one of the best of all time.) But their latest commercial — in which musical instruments, sculptures, and other artistic and creative items are crushed by a hydraulic press into the new iPad Pro — is being roundly criticized by, well, almost everyone who’s seen it.
Apple’s intent is plain: everything you could do with all this stuff can now be done with a single iPad. Isn’t technology remarkable? That’s a tactic that has worked very well for Apple’s advertisers in the past, and they’ve touched on this concept before — particularly in early iPod and iPhone commercials.
But the last time Apple used this shtick, writers and actors in Hollywood hadn’t spent half a year campaigning to protect their jobs from AI. Game studios hadn’t laid off thousands. AI musicians hadn’t proliferated on YouTube and TikTok to the fury of the record labels and artists, and the Tupac Shakur estate hadn’t issued its first AI rap beef cease and desist order. The last time Apple did this, people weren’t talking quite as urgently about AI automation snapping up all the jobs humans once held.
Some particularly harsh and alarming criticisms of the ad have come from Apple’s Japanese users as well as actors, screenwriters, and directors.
Apple has since apologized for the ad and scrapped the planned TV campaign: “Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.” Via Daring Fireball.
In the latest round of video game studio closures, Microsoft announced they were effectively shutting down four studios: Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Studios, and Roundhouse Games.
Layoffs are sweeping the video game industry, with a number of high-profile studios cutting staff or shutting down. In stark contrast to a year of blockbuster video game hits, one of the biggest ongoing industry trends in 2023 was the prevalence of mass layoffs, and they have continued into 2024. While actual figures are difficult to obtain, estimates suggest the number of workers laid off in games last year approached or exceeded 10,000. A recent GDC survey of developers suggests one-third of all game developers were impacted by layoffs last year, either directly or by witnessing them happen at their company.
This latest announcement seems like yet another sign of trouble for Microsoft’s video game endeavors.
Anne Helen Petersen considers the grief, confusion, and panic surrounding COVID to help explain the pro-Palestine protests happening on college campuses, as well as broader changes to the college experience.
There’s been so much hand-wringing about the current state of students, the source of all this disengagement, the causes of such sustained “learning loss.” The answer has always been right fucking there. It’s the grief, assholes! Grief for their weird high school graduations, of course, and for the family members they lost, and the college experience they imagined. But they’re grieving their inherited reality. I find people will name it, the same way they’ll name a hurricane, without actually acknowledging its force — as if you could separate the storm from the devastation it caused.
From the Blog
I feel like I’ve written a lot about Shōgun lately. But even though it’s been a few weeks since I finished the series, I can’t stop thinking about it, thanks in large part to powerful scenes like this one, which (strange as it sounds) feels like one of the most tense, heart-wrenching, and — dare I say it — romantic scenes of the 2024 television season.
If a second season occurs — which looks increasingly likely — then the series’ production will have their work cut out for them. Scenes like this one have set the bar for season two very high, indeed.
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